A great article about Harry published in the mail today.
Quite long but worth reading.

Should we feel sorry for Harry?
By CHRISTOPHER WILSON, Daily Mail

Prince Harry has had one hell of a week. First, there was his headline-making on the town with his minder which ended in a minor traffic accident at 4am and another PR blunder.

Then there was his high-profile arrival at Sandhurst after which, once the social niceties and photo-opportunities were over, he was plunged into an awesomely tough military regime that he is clearly ill-prepared for after a gap year that has lasted for almost two.

At the same time, he's seen his fragile reputation further tarnished - and his academic shortcomings exposed - as the details of his allegedly forged A-level art submission were aired in public at an employment tribunal involving one of his former teachers.

Could it get any worse? Well, probably. The Prince, who will be 21 in September, and his new brothers-in-arms will be subjected to all manner of tests to their physique and courage in the coming months, tempers will be short once the day is done and the spit-and-polishing begins - and no prizes for guessing who will be first in the firing-line.

For Harry got into Sandhurst on minimum qualifications - two A-levels - and if, as it is now being claimed, he is not entitled to one of them, he is equally not entitled to his place at Britain's top military academy.

This fundamental point won't have escaped the officer cadets of Harry's company - Alamein - many of whom will have struggled to get to Sandhurst and know there will be no shortcuts and no preferment in their personal careers.

They will have to struggle for a place in their regiment of choice as they watch the small amount of money they earn as cadets - their only income, in many cases - being swallowed up in the costly apparatus of becoming an officer.

The right car and the right clothes cost more than many can really afford. Plus, there will already be a sneaking presentiment as to who of their intake is going to win the coveted Sword of Honour at their passing-out parade.

So Officer Cadet Wales - younger, richer, and with a smart cavalry regiment already polishing its mess silver in readiness for his arrival - will, let us presume, not be universally popular.

And no doubt in the contact sports and exercises he has already endured and in those to come, he will have encountered the same deliberately heavy 'collisions' and the same sarcastic remarks he endured from some quarters while at school.

Fresh look at Harry

Perhaps, therefore, it's an appropriate moment to take a fresh look at the young man, fourth in line to the throne, who has been so demonised as nothing more than an upper-class lout over the past two or three years. Why does he behave the way he does?

To answer that question, one must go back more than ten years to when Diana, Princess of Wales, was still alive. In seeking to assert her preferences in all corners of her failing marriage, she chose Eton, the school of her father and brother, for Prince William over her husband's alma mater Gordonstoun. And because Prince William went there, so too should Harry.

But when the Princess approached William's housemaster, Dr Andrew Gailey, to talk about her youngest son he gently warned that there could be problems ahead.

Harry, he said, had learning difficulties which could prove devastating for him in a school where excellence is a byword, and where preferential treatment for bluebloods has long since disappeared. Charles and Diana went ahead anyway and Dr Gailey's fears were fulfilled.

Where William proved a success, Harry had difficulty in keeping up from the start. Had Diana lived, she might well have been forced to the tough but ultimately sensible decision - one reached by many parents - to take her younger son out of Eton and place him somewhere where the culture was less competitive.

But Diana died and Prince Charles - a loving but not a hands-on parent - had his attention focused elsewhere. Soon Harry was coming bottom or near-bottom in his classes, and was struggling badly.

'He should not have gone to Eton'

Is it any surprise, then, that sympathetic tutors, seeing his dilemma and foreseeing the humiliation of his A-level results (or lack of them) being publicly aired at the end of his school career, may have given the Prince a helping hand?

The evidence presented at the tribunal hearing this week of former art mistress Sarah Forsyth - she is claiming unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination following her sacking two years ago - points, not to a conniving Harry eager to cheat his way to A-level success, but to a young boy desperately out of his depth and grateful for any help he could get.

"He should not have gone to Eton, it's as simple as that," said one former courtier I spoke to this week. "From a security point of view it was convenient since his brother was already there.

"And then there's the prestige, too. But the Prince of Wales should have been prepared to review the situation, and not just assume that because William sailed through so, too, would Harry."

Perhaps Charles's distance from the boys was a factor in his failure to take Harry's plight more seriously. Indeed, I was told in 1997 by one of Charles's entourage that in the 365 days leading up to Diana's death the Prince had custody of his two boys for just 22 days.

Charles never did discover the art of successful parenting

This is now refuted by people associated with Diana, who claim the share was more evenly spread, but even they agree that when Charles did have the boys they would often be parked with their nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke or with close friends of the Prince, such as Emilie van Cutsem.

Charles never did discover the art of successful parenting but given his own upbringing that hardly comes as a surprise. "He needed to become father and mother to his boys after Diana died," I was told. "He never quite managed that."

So here we have a picture of a small, vulnerable boy who loses his mother in a horrifying accident at the critical age of puberty and is thrust into a school whose standards are simply too high for him to achieve anything which would engender a very necessary sense of self-worth.

At the same time, he must live with the media's never-ending obsession with Diana and a stream of often distasteful and highly embarrassing revelations about her life from friends, former Palace employees and lovers.

Then there is the bitter feeling between the Spencers and Windsors that poisoned relations with his mother's family.

Harry's anger

With this background it is, easier to understand where, and why, things have gone wrong for Harry - for psychologists argue that a lack of self-worth often manifests itself in anger and erratic behaviour.

Certainly, he had plenty to be angry about - growing up without a mother and with a hands-off father, left to his own devices for days on end at Highgrove while forever being reminded by his peers just how privileged his life is.

To that mixture add some further ingredients: the fact that perhaps he chose his friends unwisely. And that perhaps, through his mother, he inherited that Spencer waywardness which runs through the family like the lettering through a stick of Blackpool rock.

Put it all altogether and we arrive at a mixed-up young man who, it would be fair to say, stands only an even chance of pulling off an Army career - one bears in mind the chill warning of Sandhurst's commandant, Major General Andrew Ritchie, who cautioned: "I view misbehaving very dimly.

"I have removed certain cadets when their behaviour is not the standard of an officer, and I would do so again. He is the same as everyone else."

If Harry does manage to survive the first "five weeks of hell", as Sandhurst so proudly describes it, will it, in the end, be the making of him?

Navy a better choice - former courtier

The former courtier I spoke to did not hold out too much hope. "He is going to a cavalry regiment, and cavalry regiments are not exactly the future," I was told. "The officers perpetuate the class system, and their attitudes and views generally are Colonel Blimpish to put it mildly.

"They may be good soldiers, but they are snobbish and aloof, and bound up in themselves -they seem to take a special pleasure in it.

"It would have served the Royal Family's purpose much better if he had chosen the Royal Navy, which is pretty classless these days and where there is a true sense of mutual support through all ranks."

But, the courtier added, Harry had idolised Captain James Hewitt during the soldier's affair with Princess Diana, and it was at that early age that he decided that a cavalry officer was a good thing to be.

Hewitt - a good soldier, if a flawed personality - encouraged the young Prince in his ambitions.

We must wait and see whether it was, in the end, a good career choice or whether Harry might have been better employed working, say, for the Duchy of Cornwall while acquiring a bigger portfolio of charity work.

He has already demonstrated a certain promise through his work - albeit orchestrated by Clarence House with the very particular aim of rehabilitating the Prince in the eyes of the public - with Aids orphans in Africa.

There is, his friends would argue, a great deal that is good about Prince Harry. And what seems bad in the Prince - drinking, taking soft drugs, that senseless Nazi prank - are taken for the norm in many middle-class households these days, even if parents have loftier ambitions for their children.

Harry has not yet blown it. But perhaps Prince Charles should bear in mind the example of his greatuncle Prince George, Duke of Kent.

George, every bit as glamorous in the 1920s as Harry is today, was virtually ignored by his father George V.

Although he started out on a service career, drink and drugs were soon his undoing: he had been idle for too long in his youth and had the time to seek out the distractions which would keep him from the boredom he dreaded.

Harry, too, without constant supervision - and intervention - by Prince Charles could easily become bored with the prospect of the royal life ahead of him.

Now that his father is married to the woman he's loved for more than 30 years, surely it is time for him to pay closer attention to a man-child still desperately in need of guidance?

The awesome Major General Ritchie warned parents last Sunday of the struggles ahead for their children.

"Expect the odd anguished phone call," he told them.

He might, however, have saved his breath in Prince Charles's case: this week Papa had been on retreat, in an isolated Romanian monastery, blissfully far beyond the reach of telecommunication.

I'm not sure where that article is getting the idea that Diana would have seen that Eton was too much for Harry and pulled him out of there; it seems as though she was the one who wanted him to go there in the first place and I doubt she'd have admitted she was wrong about it. Also, it wouldn't do much for his self-esteem if he'd been pulled out of Eton for not being up to the regime there and sent somewhere else - the royal family would never have heard the end of it from the press.

I hope he does manage to make a success of his army training and career. There aren't many choices available to the younger sons of senior royalty these days, especially after the Earl of Wessex had such a high-profile failure working in the media.

I agree that Diana probably wouldn't have advocated pulling Harry out of Eton once he was there but had she lived there might have been less pressure for him to go there in the first place.

Remember he wasn't at Eton when she died. He had to repeat the last year of his Primary education after she died. One reason I remember being put forward at the time for this was that William and Harry wanted to be together and Charles also thought that it would be better for Harry if he was with William. This was in the year or so after Diana's death. Had she lived I believe that she and Charles, with Harry's involvement, may have decided on a different path for him knowing that Harry was not the most academic of students. I seem to remember that he actually qualified at the bottom of the intake and also got the lowest A levels from the school. Having that information made public certainly wouldn't have helped anyone's self esteem.

i got news again about his former teacher told everyone about Harry's paperwork but i cant believe she lied it! check it out!

Harry tape 'to prove cheat claim'

Sarah Forsyth says she was told to write text for Harry's art coursework

A sacked Eton art teacher says she taped a conversation with Prince Harry because claims she was forced into improperly helping him were ignored.

Sarah Forsyth, 30, wanted proof that she was pushed into doing some of the prince's AS-Level art coursework, a tribunal in Reading, Berkshire, heard.

The college and royal aides deny any suggestion of "cheating".

Ms Forsyth - who worked at Eton until her contract ran out in the summer of 2003 - is claiming unfair dismissal.

She claimed that Prince Harry was a "weak student" who needed to be helped and that the school's head of art, Ian Burke, had ordered her to write five pages of text to accompany a project by the prince.

She also alleged that Mr Burke had completed some of the Prince's artwork - a claim he denies.

In his closing submission to the employment tribunal, counsel for Ms Forsyth, Robin Allen QC, said she had raised complaints about Mr Burke with the deputy headmaster and a school governor by letter and e-mail respectively.

Is it surprising that she considered what steps would really make those in power sit up and notice what had happened to her

Robin Allen QC on his client Sarah Forsyth

But, Mr Allen said, a decision had been taken not to deal with the complaints.

He said his client had finally made the recording of the prince on the way to his exam in the summer of 2003 to force the school to deal with her allegations against Mr Burke.

Ms Forsyth has told the tribunal the prince then agreed he had only contributed a small part to his coursework journal text for the exam.

Mr Allen told the three-member tribunal panel: "It is clear that by the end of May the pressure on Sarah Forsyth was quite intolerable.

"She had been ignored and belittled. She was criticised for raising issues and expecting help."

'Not credible'

He went on: "Is it surprising that she considered what steps would really make those in power sit up and notice what had happened to her?

"She wished to get the proof which could not be denied that Ian Burke had behaved improperly and to force the school to address her issues."

Ms Forsyth needed the tape because otherwise the school would have denied the allegations, Mr Allen added.

Eton claims Ms Forsyth was only asked to help the prince with technical vocabulary and says she was dismissed because she was not up to the job.

The Royal Family has strenuously denied there was any cheating

In his closing submission, Nigel Giffen QC, representing Eton, denied Ms Forsyth's employment would have been continued if she had not made the complaint.

"Is it really the case that capability is being put forward here in June 2003 as a smokescreen to conceal the fact that she was really being dismissed for writing that letter and sending that email?" he asked.

"I suggest that simply doesn't begin to be a credible proposition." Mr Burke had not bullied Ms Forsyth, he had simply believed the teacher was not "doing the job terribly well" and had tried to improve the situation, Mr Giffen said. The tribunal's decision is expected by early July.

sunday on tv bbc2 a funny programme called dead ringers where the famous are impersonated and made fun of they had the queen saying amongst others "... and Harry has sent us some of his art work....." and the camara went down to the Mona Lisa propped against the leg of her desk.

LONDON, May 7 - Prince Harry was back in the headlines Saturday, this time after his limousine failed to stay at the scene of an accident when it clipped and scraped a parked car in London.

Harry, who begins army officer training this weekend at Sandhurst military college, emerged in the wee hours of Friday with a "tipsy" friend after "an all-night bender" at a posh London nightclub.

With the 20-year-old seen laughing in the back seat, the chauffeur-driven
limousine clipped the wing mirror off a parked Citroen, and scraped the side of the vehicle, before stopping only "a few seconds" and then driving off.

"Everyone knows it is illegal to leave the scene of an accident," an unnamed source was quoted as saying.

"They should have at least left a note on the car."

A broadly similar account appeared in the Daily Mail newspaper Saturday. There was no immediate reaction from royal officials.

Harry, the younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, has become a regular in the tabloids, thanks to his party-hardy lifestyle and his
apparent love for a "white", as pointed out by the Prince, Zimbabwean-born woman, Chelsy Davy, 19.

Last October he hit a photographer outside a different London nightclub,
while in January he was pictured at a party in a Nazi military outfit a
fortnight before the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Ah! James! Happy to see you again! I've been following your posts for a while and you really make me laugh each time (particularly that comments on Zara Phillips in an old tread ...).
For info, it's illegal to not report the accident within 24 hours, so nothing illegal has been done.
Anyway, I would like to ask you a question (if it's not to personal of course): are you a republican? That the impression I have from your posts. And if so, why do you like this forum?
Have a good day!

Well, idriel, my last post wasn't my own words but was taken from a news report so make of that what you will .

Yes I know, the story was reported by the Sun and other taboids. I wasn't talking about that one but about other posts in other threads.
That's was not an accusation or something, just a question out of curiosity.
Anyway, have a nice day.